Rampage: Total Destruction
Like GTA, if it were a sidescroller and you were a monster destroying buildings
Tags: Rampage: Total Destruction Categories: Reviews, Wii Reviews
Posted by Brian Arnold on Feb 27th, 2007
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rampage: Total Destruction (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Arcade | No | ||
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I have very fond memories of Rampage. When I was a youth at Roller West, a local roller skating rink, Rampage was one of the arcade machines , and right alongside Final Fight and Elevator Action, Rampage was one of the best games there. Of course, now that I’m older, I realize that it was really quite repetitive with little real replay value, but hey, monsters! Beating up buildings! Eating people! Could it get any better?
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Midway has tried to answer that question over the years with new versions of Rampage. There have been ports to just about every console to man, and new variations on the formula. Well, okay, not really new variations on the formula, so much as improved graphics and new monster types. Where the original Rampage had only three monsters (albeit awesome ones), and Rampage: World Tour added in another handful, Rampage: Total Destruction has forty monsters (ten of which are Wii-specific). There are stats associated with each creature, and each has a special ability, but for the most part, play is very similar across all creatures. You run about an environment which is technically 3D, although really it’s more two-dimensional with a very marginal element of depth added into stages in the form of some buildings being in front of other buildings.
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There’s a small story element at the outset, with a video indicating that the mutants are all really people who had a taste test of Scum Soda, which really doesn’t sound very good anyways, and it went horribly awry. Many of the monsters are initially locked and discovered as you beat down buildings. You also unlock special moves through the beatdowns, and each stage has a specific goal to try and attain, but really, simple repetitive beatdown is the name of the game here. As an early Wii title, the developer decided to horn in motion controls that really don’t do a whole lot for the game. You can swing the remote around instead of button mashing to do some of your beating things and jumping, and that’s that.
Graphically, it’s a bit of an improvement over past titles, and the cartoonish quality really gives it a bit of charm. The sounds are decent but really just background noise — nothing really stands out as spectacular. It’s hard to talk about the specs here, since the gameplay is so basic.
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As bonuses, they’ve thrown in the really bad Rampage NES port and Rampage: World Tour, so you can compare the games against each other I guess and see how little the series has moved forward in the past 20+ years. It’s amusing to play them as well, just for some flavor, but really, this whole thing feels a bit cheap. It’s a good thing that it’s a budget title from the start.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Some graphics improvements + Tons of variety in the monsters + Having the old versions add a bit of value |
6.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Very repetitive gameplay - Little to no replay value - Unnecessary motion controls |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you were a big fan of Rampage and have been thinking "I'd like this more if I could physically punch instead of button mash!", then you're pretty much the target audience. As a fan of Rampage back in the day, it's enjoyable, but probably not worth a full purchase, but maybe still worth at least a rental. | |
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Tags: Rampage: Total Destruction
Posted by Brian Arnold on Feb 27th, 2007 and is filed under Reviews, Wii Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
